I am always curious to see how well my favorite tool brands are doing. With publicly traded companies, where anyone can own a share, they have to be completely transparent about things like revenue, expenses, and profit.

I figured that many of you might be interested in seeing some of these numbers as well. Following is a quick look at the 2015 year-end data that’s been released for a number of public tool brands.

I checked and double-checked the numbers for errors, and made a good faith effort to be accurate. Please let me know if you find any errors!

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Stanley Black & Decker

You know Stanley Black & Decker for their tool brands – Dewalt, Porter Cable, Stanley, Proto, among others. But SBD also engages in some other markets, such as fasteners and security. And apparently healthcare products too.

2015 Revenue: $11.172 billion

2015 Revenue from Tools & Storage: $7.141 billion

2015 Tool & Storage Profit: $1.170 billion

In other words, in regard to tool sales, Stanley Black & Decker pockets around 16.4 cents for every dollar in sales.

By sales, keep in mind that Stanley Black & Decker sells to the stores where you buy your tools, they don’t sell directly to consumers. Sales to retailers should be proportional to sales by retailers, but that’s not always the case.

They had net sales of $3.353 billion, with the cost of good sold being $1.705 billion. So that’s a gross profit of $1.648 billion.

But then there are operating costs, which total a little more than $1 billion.

After everything, their net earnings drops to around $479 million. That’s around 14.3%.

As an aside… More About SB&D

Stanley Black & Decker’s earnings ratio is similar – 16.4% profit for the tools & storage segment. Their overall gross profit is a little less, proportionally: $4.072 billion. Without knowing more, it’s impossible to tell whether the ratio of gross profit to net sales is lower more because of tools & storage segment, or their other segments.

I just found it to be interesting.

Snap-on tools are quite pricey, but they’re barely making 50 cents to the dollar in profit. I’m talking about gross sales profits, not net earnings after various expenses. Stanley Black & Decker is making a little less.

Revenue in 2015 increased 10% to a record high. Net profit increases as well, by 16.5%.

I quote:

Our Milwaukee Tool business continues to take substantial market share with a sales increase of 24.4%.

2015 Revenue: $2.474 billion

2015 Profit: $159 million

TTi is based in Hong Kong.

Power tools and equipment make up around 79.1% of TTi’s revenue, with their floor care and appliance division making up the rest.

What’s interesting is how much of TTi’s sales are in North America – 74.6%. Europe is their second largest market, contributing to 17.8% of sales, and the rest of the world 7.6%.

TTi’s profit is about 6.427% of their revenue. Their gross profit margin was 35.6%, which isn’t too far off from Stanley Black & Decker’s.

I found this part to be interesting:

Investment in product design and development amounted to US$66 million (2014: US$57 million), representing 2.6% of revenue (2014: 2.5%), reflecting our continuous strive for innovation. We will continue to invest to create breakthrough technology and deliver broad base end-user products and categories as these are most critical not only to maintain sales growth momentum but also margin expansions.

So they spent more in 2015 on R&D than in 2014, and they plan to continue the trend.

Danaher (Matco, Fluke, Amprobe, More)

Danaher, which owns Matco, Fluke, Amprobe, Pomona, Keithley, Tektronix, released data for their different divisions.

Matco is still owned by Danaher, but it’s not listed in their business directory. In Danaher’s recent report, perhaps Matco numbers are absorbed into their industrial technologies total? It’s unclear.

2015 Test & Measurement Sales: $2.655 billion

2015 Test & Measurement Operating Profit: $614 million

2015 Total Revenue: $20.563 billion

2015 Total Operating Profit: $3.469 billion

2015 Net Earnings: $3.357 billion

I’ve spoken to Fluke outreach team a few times this year, and what always amazes me is how they strive to be better. I’ll talk more about this soon, but I’ve become deeply impressed with the brand and the way they approach their tool business.

Gross and Net Profit margin is one way to look at things – another is from the stockholders perspective – looking at ROE and/or ROIC / ROA year over year and the P/E ratio. Reading the balance sheets, footnotes and disclaimers in an annual report are also interesting – but I’m reminded of ENRON and others who managed to paint a rosier picture that the true facts would have painted.

True enough about Enron, fred, but they weren’t pushing crates off the loading dock as these companies are. Always thought (hoped?) that a company that had to account for actual deliveries likely had less air in the numbers than a company such as Enron selling technology, services and the future.

Enron was pushing natural gas down pipelines, electricity across wires and even pulp and paper via trucks – claiming revenues way in excess of all of these tool companies combined. My point was that annual reports can be deceiving – and Enron seemed to fool many professional financial analysts, got high marks in Fortune magazine etc. Maybe in the post-Enron era – financial reporting has gotten more rigorous – but human greed and bad behavior is still very much alive. That’s not to say that any of the financials of the companies that Stuart is reporting on are not accurate indicators of their financial health. I’m just saying that you might need to do some digging beyond just looking at reported revenues and income to get a full well rounded picture of any company.

There are indeed a number of ways to “cook the books”, some of which are not discerned by examining financial results alone. GE used to smooth its quarterly earnings by over or under estimating the results of pending lawsuits. Hewlett Packard recorded increasing profit margins and sales, while their product quality took a nosedive.

As I intimated, Sarbanes-Oxley mandated financial reporting – has probably added frustration and add expense to the “good-guys” – but as for the real crooks – who knows. In the long run “cooking the books” as you say – probably will not help a poor company stay solvent – nor will allowing product quality to nosedive help. Although it has been said that when FDR asked the economist John Maynard Keynes what he thought about the long run – Keynes reportedly told FDR “in the long run we are all dead”

Do you have any info on Bosch. I did a quick search and their 2015 annual revenue is 70.6 Billion Euro. They compete pretty good with their power tools but it’s actually a small footprint compared to everything else they produce.

That oh s why I won’t buy anything from Milwaukee or Ryobi they are owned by a Chinese company and I don’t want to hear they have a headquarters in the USA the Chinese have hundreds of headquarters here for other companies so everytime you buy a tool from Milwaukee the money goes to China I don’t trust them why do you think Dewalt are moving there tool making facilities back to the USA

Milwaukee tools must represent a super slick military op on the part of ‘the Chinese’ central government because it’s owned through a front company—you know, disguised as publicly traded stock distributed among thousands of investors. The Manchurian plot only thickens when you consider the corporate charter is registered and traded on the Hong Kong exchange, not Beijing. And Hong Kong is not really properly considered ‘the Chinese’. Hong Kong is however the most hyper-capitalist region on the planet.

In any event, you probably SHOULD buy Milwaukee and Ryobi tools if the money does indeed go straight to ‘the Chinese’. Such highly patriotic behavior will facilitate US Gov borrowing nearly incomprehensibly large sums from China which in turn facilitates the USA’s high technology waste subsidy economy which itself facilitates the USA pimping out the whole world, exemplified by China lending trillions and trillions to the USA.

It’s probably prudent not to trust those shifty Chinese companies. Reserve loyalty for good ole American mom-n-pop outfits like General Electric. No Oriental Mysticism there. Just don’t look too closely at their accounting records.